Six Feet Under

chapter seven

[ 10/01/2015, Robertson Household, 1200 ]

The harsh light filtered in through the blinds, and Adelaide winced as she peeled her eyelids open.

"Uh," she mumbled eloquently, before rolling over and promptly falling off the couch she had been sprawled on. "Where 'm I?"

Her eyes were blurry, and her head was pounding with a vengeance that could not possibly have been anything other than a massive hangover. As her eyesight slowly sharpened, she recognized the ceiling with its old-fashioned fans.

"Leah?" she called, wincing at the sound of her voice.

"Mhm," a voice replied groggily. "'s too early."

She raised her head just a bit, looked around at the empty bottles of Smirnoff and Jack Daniels lying haphazardly on the floor accompanied by several cans of beer and red solo cups, and thunked it back down on the floor. Without the buzz of alcohol in her veins, she could feel the tingling in the tips of her fingers again. The thoughts she'd tried to drown with alcohol in the first place surfaced one by one: the guilt, the things Camilla Clark implied, even more guilt. She felt numb and achy at the same time.

"God," she let a breath out in a whoosh and gave up trying to calm her racing mind. "What time is it?"

"Fuck if I know," Leah snapped, peevish. "Clock's right there."

She felt like someone had split her skull open with a machete, but she raised her head to look at the old grandfather clock in the corner. Noon.

"What even happened." She phrased it like a statement as her head became too heavy to hold up and she dropped it back to the floor. Her mind is buzzing again, and she already missed the numbness the booze had afforded her.

"Fuck if I know," Leah repeated, and her sentence was punctuated by a grumpy huff from somebody, possibly Emily or Jen. "You wanted to get smashed, so we did."

"High school life," Jen chimed in, giggling cut off by a pained moan as she stumbled to her feet. "Time to go worship the toilet god."

"Fuck," she cursed. "I need to get home. I shouldn't have stayed the night."

"You were drunk as hell," Emily pointed out; she seemed a little bit more presentable than Adelaide felt. "If you tried to drive you would've ended up in a ditch."

Her insides went cold, suddenly, and she vividly understood the meaning of the phrase loose lips sink ships. Nothing loosened lips as well as alcohol. What had she confessed to, last night, if she had been as drunk as they said? Did she say anything? She hadn't been that drunk in a long, long time.

She laughed then, too dry, too sudden.

"I really need to go," her tongue felt like lead in her mouth. "Thanks for the booze."

"Sure," Leah dropped her head back to the couch with a painful groan. "See you around."

Adelaide got up, swallowed to settle the rush of nausea roiling in her stomach, and carefully picked her way through the mess of cups and bottles while unlocking her phone.

God, she hoped she didn't make any drunken phone calls of confessions.

Her call log was thankfully empty; she'd made it a habit to clear her logs as often as possible, leftover habit, she'd assume.

She thought a little hysterically that if her mother was still alive she'd be getting the lecture of the century right about now, but. Cecile Greene was gone, and there is nobody left to lecture her anymore.